We have our first sign of Spring sitting in the window  sill, looking out onto an alley and parking lot that don’t really seem suited for growing food. That’s one of the trade-offs of living downtown, I suppose; I gave up a yard for a prime location.

We’ll have a garden still, just not here. Between Mom’s house, Taylor’s prolific garden, our community garden, the ECC Demo garden and the college farm, I think I’ll be just fine.

Thanks to Phil Swindler of Swindler & Sons Florists, who graciously gave me the flat of lettuce and bok choi above, we’ll have some green to look at until the warmer weather decides to stay. We’ll have to figure out how to cat-proof our window boxes though, because, as you can see–

cats need their leafy greens, too. Those buggers.

In college I had gotten used to the dimly lit, closet-sized kitchens of campus apartments. We’d cook in them, sure, but only as quickly as possible and maybe once or twice a week. Meals were convenient and fast, with a coffee table for a kitchen table, and T.V. for table talk. The food was normally good because we were resourceful and shopped smart, but even as we moved farther from campus where kitchens tended to improve, the time spent in them didn’t.

Since I’ve been back in Wilmington, the time I spend in kitchens of friends or Mom or– only recently– my own, has grown from twenty minutes a day to several hours a night. We cook because, some of the time, there’s nothing else to do. We cook because food has a lot to do with our jobs. We actually use all of our cookware, our blender, food processors and bread maker instead of letting them collect dust in a cabinet where they used to be. And lately, we cook because our kitchen is big, for the first time ever.

On a typical night here we’ll cook greens. Kale or chard or spinach. Lots of onion and garlic, some olive oil. Normally some kind of protein– either chicken, tofu or tuna. Maybe rice or a grain and almost always a steamed vegetable. In short, simple food. But good food. And the leftovers make meals for days.

Frankie and I have been inspired by it. We’ve decided to set a goal of three new recipes a week, found online or borrowed from friends. It should make for good times in the kitchen and add to our recipe book, as well as make for some good blogstuff.  I don’t want to trumpet it or make a production of it because, well, it’s been done before. A lot. This is just a way to challenge ourselves to spend more time in the kitchen, with friends. Sign me up.

I think to start, we’re going to break out the slow cooker and make this Indian dish I’ve been ogling. Slow cooked chicken masala. Yes please.

If ever my plans of writing and making photographs for a living don’t pan out, I’m taking a cue from Jason Mraz and starting an avacado farm in California.

Watch me.

Few places around the country have the luxury of year-round warm weather, suitable for growing food into the winter months. The rest of us must grin and bear it, and we’re left to rely on food trucked in from warmer climes at the expense of freshness and overall quality. But we may not be as powerless to the elements as we think.

A few different sources over the past couple of days have written about growing food indoors. The number of plants that we can realistically grow indoors pales in comparison to what we can put outside in our garden, where they have space to thrive, but that shouldn’t discourage us. Container gardening, either using artificial grow lights or a sunny window sill, can yield a surprising amount of food in a short amount of time, while we wait for the thermostat to climb.

Most people start their indoor gardening with herbs and spices, which require minimal sunlight and little space to grow. The National Gardening Association has a good article on indoor herb gardening here. Oregano, basil, chives and mint all grow well indoors, and can be grown year round in a container. Leafy vegetables like lettuce and arugula seem to fare better than their fruiting counterparts, as they require less maintenance and sunlight to thrive.

One indoor growing option has been sprouting up in a variety of places recently.

Jill Richardson of La Vida Locavore, the esteemed sustainable food blog, writes this week of learning to grow sprouts indoors. Sprouts may be the wunderkind of the homegrown food movement, because they’re incredibly rich in nutrients, relatively cheap to grow (relative to their sometimes hefty pricetag at the supermarket) and are ready to harvest in just seven days. Richardson’s post offers a nice DIY tutorial, complete with pictures and commentary on how to get started growing sprouts. Nutritionist Monica Reinagel, who writes for nutritiondata.com, recently wrote about the same dilemma of wanting to grow food in the winter, and highlighted sprouts as well.

If you’re willing to spend a little more money and spring for artificial lights, peppers and even tomatoes can be grown indoors during the winter, and can be transferred easily into your outside garden come spring. Peppers and tomatoes both like hot weather and won’t produce the quality of fruit indoors that you’re used to outdoors, but they will still grow inside and will give you a head-start when it’s time to transplant.

If nothing else, the next time you spring for baby greens or broccoli sprouts at the grocery store, ask yourself this question: “Could I do this myself?” It’s worth asking, and you just might surprise yourself with your answer.

The biggest overhaul in its 35-year history leaves the federal Women, Infants and Children nutrition program with a dual mission: fight childhood hunger and childhood obesity at the same time.

Proponents say it’s possible to win on both fronts. But they also admit that it isn’t easy turning WIC from a basic supplier of milk, eggs and cheese into a public-health campaign with food prescriptions so specific that only certain types of canned salmon (pink, not red) and sliced bread (whole wheat, never white) will do.

“I do think that the changes are good because you get more fruits and vegetables,” said Stephanie Green, a North Side woman who counts on WIC to help with food for her and her 8-month-old son.

“The problems are just in how they did it. It’s very confusing.”

Health officials say the new list of WIC-approved foods, which specifies brands, could fill a notebook. It took effect Oct. 1 in Ohio but already is set for a January revision as more companies seek to have their products added.

The story goes on to mention two, seemingly conflicting reports, both released last week, that tell of the highest recorded rate of food insecurity in United States (USDA) and the highest rate of recorded childhood obesity for Ohio (Trust for America’s Health).

Those two reports don’t seem to fit with each other, but they do. Health departments around the country have been trying to re-frame the issue of hunger as not a complete lack of food, but a lack of nutritious food. The term “food security” often replaces “hunger” in food policy discussions in the U.S., and it has become the best way to define the dearth of fresh-food access for low-income Americans. Hunger in the U.S. doesn’t look the same as hunger in the 3rd World.

This is a growing trend. In 2006, MSNBC reported that the number of overweight people in the world– nearly 1 billion– had surpassed the number of undernourished people– 800 million. That number may be influenced greatly by the obesity epidemic in China, but it has repercussions the world over.

The Dispatch story ends with arguably the most important information of the whole article: the places where an increasing number of Americans get their food– bodegas, corner stores and gas stations– don’t have fresh food, and that’s a problem.

Some advocates for the poor applaud the move toward more-healthful foods but worry about access. Many mothers with young children don’t have cars. And if Aunt Millie’s Hearth All Natural 7 Grain hamburger buns meet the new WIC standards, it won’t much matter if the corner store doesn’t stock them and the big-box is too far away, said Lisa Hamler-Fugitt, executive director of the Ohio Association of Second Harvest Foodbanks.

“I’m very, very concerned about access,” she said. “By and large, these neighborhood stores do not carry fresh fruits and vegetables.”

Farmers markets can help fill that fresh food void, but there aren’t enough of them to realistically address the problem. Hopefully the WIC overhaul will help increase that access, but only time will tell.

The surge in popularity of urban agriculture is still growing around the country, with once-booming metropolitan areas rediscovering their agrarian roots and realizing the potential of unused land. Detroit has become the poster-city for urban ag, with its vast acreage of abandoned land, a veritable food desert inside the city limits and its dilapidated industrial base. Oakland is another city at the forefront of the urban ag movement. The University of California at Berkeley released this comprehensive study last month [pdf] which gathered data on all the unused land in the Bay Area and its potential if retooled to grow food.

But because of extenuating factors (poor soil quality, manufacturing pollution, et cetera) cities have a number of hurdles to clear before they can realistically grow enough food to feed their densely populated communities.

Rural areas have it a little easier. We have far more land, fewer mouths to feed and relatively fertile soil. We are surrounded by farmland and have a good number of farmers and agriculture professionals at the ready. Through the Clinton County Fresh Network, we’re hoping to connect those food-farmers to people in our community and make it viable for newcomers to take up the spade and contribute to our local food economy.

Along those lines, we’ve been researching effective ways to utilize public and private space for food production. Edible landscaping is something we’re interested in, but there may be other ways to use space and for local agencies to supplement their food distribution by planting gardens on-site. We have a number of organizations in Clinton County that collect and distribute food to those in need, and they are stretched especially thin when the economy struggles to turn upward. By planting vegetable plots on their own land and having volunteers who already help within the agency manage the gardens, food pantries could supplement their own outreach tremendously. There are several good models around the country of organizations that plug-in surplus food (either gleaned from farms or backyard gardens) to food kitchens, specifically Ample Harvest and America’s Grow a Row. But, after having done some research, I haven’t come across any models for establishing gardens on site at food pantries. If you know of any, please contact us or leave a comment on this post.

It’s all food for thought, but it’s something we’re excited and willing to explore.